Conventional switching platforms are advantageously employed in telecommunications systems to facilitate, for instance, private branch exchange (PBX) administered interoffice communications or switching and call queuing functionality for a call center. Call centers are employed in a multitude of applications such as telemarketing, customer service and sales support applications. A call center is typically embodied in a central location wherein inbound calls, outbound calls, or a combination thereof are processed by an organization in association with computer automation. The call center generally employs a number of agents who communicate with customers via telephone, facsimile, electronic mail, or other communication techniques or devices. The call center has the ability to handle a considerable volume of communication traffic at the same time in association with automation techniques such as call routing and equitable distribution, call screening, agent skill matching, and other resource optimization and management reporting functionality.
A switching platform employable with a call center typically includes a computer server system that provides call and control processing functions for the call center. The computer server system may employ a number of input-output distributor cards connectable via a multibus interface. Each input-output distributor card provides an interface from a main control unit to a switching matrix, which is capable of controlling a number of line cards. The line cards provide the physical interface to access nodes, which may include digital and analog instruments and digital and analog trunks.
The call centers that employ a switching platform, however, suffer from a number of deficiencies. More specifically, the call centers have a problem in determining if a person answered the phone call. In a typical call center, a call center application makes a call to a recipient via the switching platform. The switching platform then determines when the call at the receiving is answered and informs a call center application. Then, the call center application must find an available agent and inform the call center's computer server system to connect the agent to the phone call. The time between the phone call being answered and an agent connecting to the phone call could be a noticeable period of time. If a person answered the call, the person would hear a period of silence and may cause the person to hang-up. Thus, the call center would lose a potential customer.
Another call center deficiency is not being able to determine what answered the phone call. If the call center application does not know if a person answered the call, an agent could be connected to an answering machine instead of a person. This could result in a loss of another potential customer.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a system that overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art.